I'm simulating a space craft in spacecraft mode, trying to get in to orbit on a interesting planet. moving to a planet and other starsystem is done with the "g"key. At first i wanted to fly without using the g key but i quickly noticed the problem of overshooting the planet. I like to simulate real space flight. but it is kind of hard.

So what constrains do you put your self to. Dr do you just randomly select a star and go to it. Without any speed limits?

I use one of THOSE weaker computers . So I'd mostly either explore with map mode, or just use the main planetarium and avoid landing on planets. However, my computer has been crashing a lot, and we may have to restore or replace it...

EDIT: I got a stronger computer, so now I planet hop freely. I pick random stars, fly there manually, go to a planet or moon and "walk" on its surface with the "F" key trick. I often listen to background music.

Most of the time I pick a random galaxy, choose a region an pick a random star ( or look for life ), choose a object in the solar system browser and press G, O, and Time ON fast to see the movement of planets/moon and eventually spot a nice alignement. After that I switch to spacecraft mode and fly around the object I've choosed to discover , eventually I spawn a ship and put it in orbit. I haven't a strong PC so for the ground exploration part, Time is off, LOD0 or -2 and I usually untick few other graphics features for better comfort, once I find a neat spot, I put all the graphic features ON and most of the time I enjoy watching a time lapse and fly around slowly. Always with music. I also enjoy edits stuff, I've always dream to fly around known galaxies, to see them in 3D, SpaceEngine allow us to pick a real galaxy and to realise that. I hope one day SE will implement the possibility to have twisted/distorted arms !

Thats for the basic enjoyments, I've many other way to have fun ingame

I see SE a lot of the time as a photography game, like Pokemon Snap but with planets. Setting up interesting events, like eclipses, occlusions, alignments, etc, can get nice pictures, especially from low orbit around a planet and with a space ship in view.

Also, it can be fun doing a 'grand tour' of a solar system in a spacecraft, flying from the sun to the first, then second, and seeing if you can use the gravity to adjust the course to the next destination. Overshooting can be a pain, so the stop motion key *z by default i think) is useful, but it sometimes is more fun to burn your speed off manually.

Keeping lower velocities and using time speed up / slow down is a good way of travelling far without losing precision during the approach.

I use it mostly to simply explore, and take cool pictures to use as computer wallpapers. I particularly enjoy planets in binary systems where the poles have a sunset on either side, or terras with life orbiting gas giants. Seeing them in the sky looks really alien, it's amazing.

With the help of some ambient music i try to simulate a journey similar to those shown in documentaries , including planet/moon landings in real spacecraft speed, to feel the magic of approaching a planet

i generally just go around, looking around the stars for terra planets, and if they are "unusual", then i stop by for detailed screenshooting, otherwise i just pass over to the next system, and so on so on....

tho, recently i've discovered a nice trick to make fly-bys in free mode, which they just come out pretty neat, for me at least.

Sometimes, I like to go out into a region of procedural galaxies, set the speed at 1 Mpc/sec, and just watch the galaxies move by. After watching for a few minutes, you begin to notice patterns in the distribution of the galaxies, how some are arrayed in linear structures dozens of megaparsecs long leading into large clusters, amidst voids of empty space. Once you notice the pattern, the whole universe looks different, and it's easy to be awestruck just slowly flying through the filaments and voids that outline the structure of the cosmos.

One of the most amazing experiences in SpaceEngine at present in my opinion.

Settings are on LOD +1, FOV 90, all eye candy features on for best screenshots quality. I choose a random Star / Nebula / Galaxy press the G and search for what I think it would be a nice planet (using F2 key). What I enjoy most is the seamless space to atmosphere transition, using WASD keys, so I do that a lot. Watching the Sky of an alien planet and see a moon and be able to go there and do the same its awesome.

Another feature really cool that I like is the J,K,L keys (time control), so you can sit on an alien planet and watch the stars move as the planet rotate. You can get nice screenshots that way, I posted some in the "General Discussions > Image Dump" thread. While you´re inside a planet, looking at the sky, use Telescope mode to see the moons with time x1, and you be able to see the translation movement of the moon.

I personally like Free Mode to go exploring, but occasionally I turn on Spaceship mode.

I discovered this game (is it ?) yesterday, looking at a video on youtube, from my freebox IAP. I downloaded it at once. So di I with Solar 2 or Osmos... whatever...

For the moment I'm still learning the keymaps, looking for interesting worlds & star systems, making delightful screenshots, testing the 3D settings, testing new flares MODS or new surfaces ...

I finally stopped by the "HD Mass Effect flare for Auto-Exposure", no 3D water, LOD=0, stars as sprite & dots. everything is working fine except big planets as jupiter or earth (bitmap side), for which I still experience flickering & "Error disposing memory" but I don't care too much. I However got a core duo E8500 + 2GB RAM + HD5670 1GB but it seems not to be sufficient...

I love hearing smooth songs or ambient songs during the trip, or nothing at all. I would love hearing planets sounds like jupiter sounds we find on youtube, or wind during my flights on terras, but well maybe for version 1.0 ?

I'm only using free mode, space/craft mode is still completely incomprehensible to my point of view. Reading the last post, I see what I was searching for : J,K,L keys (time control) to follow the stars of our central MW black hole ! Still didn't try the deep space exploration yet...

I like to go to youtube and play a custom playlist of emotional ambient classical selections from artists such as The Album Leaf, Two Steps From Hell (mellow selections), Liquid Mind, Ludovico Einaudi, Hybrid, Hanz Zimmer, and others.

When I explore, I insist on keeping it in Aircraft mode to feel more realistic physics of movement and remind me how small I am compared to everything around me. I've spent a lot of time practicing maneuvering in this mode by finding several moons that are close to each other and "dancing" around them in figure-8's for a while (using slight spins, and strafing to give a nice panning effect to everything), even using their gravitational pull to sling me around them. (To the music, this is REALLY breathtaking).

I'm currently practicing with spacecrafts and learning how to maneuver them through orbits correctly with the trajectory vectors. I'm also anxious for when ships will be able to go interstellar, and I hope controlling them will become at least a little more simple.

Sometimes I will set the time scale to x300 or so, bind myself to a planet's rotation, fly far away from it and let its rotation sling me through stars, while adding a slight spin to my camera with the e or q key. I'll keep the time scale from going too fast, keep my velocity also very slow as well as my spin and just aimlessly float around like that. It might make some people sea-sick, but not me. It's a very fun ride.

Well, I finally understood how to pilot shuttles (without velocity vectors it was absolutely impossible). But with them on a screen it becomes a piece of cake. So what I do now is working as a spaceline pilot

I have discovered all terras with life in 30 parsecs around Earth, gave them names and now I make passenger, freight and touristic cruise flights between them. So, at first I take a shuttle from Earth to the Moon orbit, where the spaceship is always located, then I drive the spaceship to the destination star (yep, without using "Go" option, my speed is usually 1000-5000 a.e./second depending on location). Upon arrival into the system I take the shuttle again and make smooth and nice landing right onto the surface. The moment when I brake through the clouds and see alien landscape is the most exciting part. And the spaceports are always located in designated areas (usually two or three for each planet), so it takes some time to learn how to land at the exact coordinates. And yes, I like to make loud announcements for my passengers, like : "Ladies and gentlemens, we are now arriving in Solaris system, the estimated time before landing at Terra Nova is about two hours. Please proceed to the docking area and take your places in the Shuttle"..Lol..That gives a lot of fun.

I usually play the game windowed, since it helps a lot with performance.

Settings are LOD 1 and everything else pretty low.

I just click on random stars, looking for a cool place. If I find one, I turn off atmospheres and clouds, and land.

Once it loads, (after a while) I turn atmosphere and (possibly) clouds on. I look for a nice spot.

If I find a really nice spot, I crank the LOD to two, wait a couple of minutes, then go fullscreen, again wait a while.

Then I rapidly click F11 trying to take a screenshot at 1-2 FPS.

I very rarely go to nebulas, since they slow the game down a lot. I usually stay in the Milky Way and Andromeda, avoiding any random galaxies, since I have this strange fear of going into really deep space, where aren't any stars or planets, just black space.